Commentary, Opinion

Remembering where you were and where we’re going

July 18, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Brock Weir

“I hate it when he gets in there!”

That phrase was uttered by Marge Simpson nearly 30 years ago, while giving, to borrow a phrase from fellow fictional icon Basil Fawlty, the dining room wall a “damned good thrashing” with a broom.

Bart retreated into this dark and damp space following a family spat. Marge may have hated it when Bart crouched down and got into this particular storage nook, but as a lifelong fan of the cartoon, I didn’t really see the problem at the time. After all, it was familiar territory for me!

Strange as it sounds, when I was about that perennial age of Bart’s, I loved a good crawlspace and all the possibilities they might hold. My grandmother’s, for instance, was nothing short of a treasure trove that I still don’t feel, decades after the sale of her house, fully revealed its secrets.

Reminders of the past were thrown in there with apparently little rhyme or reason. In one dusty corner, there was a mercifully clean military bedpan. In another, boxes of well-worn Nancy Drew mysteries. Elsewhere, among the near-fossilized deposits left behind by a long-since-dead cat, there were odd pieces of furniture, small disused appliances, and stacks of old newspapers, magazines, and other mouldering mementos.

These newspapers, magazines and various paper goodies were usually my favourite finds as they spoke volumes about what previous generations felt were important – or, at the very least, interesting.

There were old Eaton catalogues, sheets of stamps commemorating the marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco, scrapbooks on the wedding of Princess Margaret and the Moon Landing, and, shedding a light on the tumult of this period in time, scads of clippings and entire newspapers and magazines commemorating the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.

I can’t say with absolute certainty what my forebears’ intentions were when they squirrelled those items away, but they were an education for this guy all those many years later. Looking back, I feel they not only gave me an appreciation of history, but context for the world we’re living in today, and our place as individuals within it.

They also served to spark an interest in current events and attune my young brain to game-changing moments in our own history that were happening in real-time.

At the time of the crawlspace exploration and excavation, I was able to ask my parents and grandparents questions as I uncovered pieces of the past, including how it felt to live through any one of these very important, era-defining historical events, for better or worse, and their reminiscences stick with me to this day.

They certainly had their fair share of “I remember where I was when X happened…” moments, and my generation has as well, but I have to say these types of moments are happening at too quick a pace these days. In fact, with one happening on what feels to be a near-weekly basis now, it’s feeling… well, it isn’t right to say the novelty has worn off, nor is “excitement” the right word in this context, but it’s feeling a bit threadbare.

It or we?

This past Saturday afternoon saw another one of those, “Do you remember where you were when…” moments when news broke that Donald Trump had been injured in an apparent assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.

A game-changer by any stretch of the imagination, no matter what your political leanings, it would have ordinarily been a moment where the world would stop to catch its breath and try to make sense of it all. Where I happened to be, on a long-awaited beach day, there was very little of that as many people checked their phones, made a comment or two, and went on with the rest of their day.

Yet, images soon rolled out, each one more evocative than the last. One knew they would come to be among the images that defined a campaign if not the decade, or even the first quarter of the twenty-first century, and yet…

And yet with no disrespect intended to the family of the person who lost their life in this incident, nor to the Trump family, in many respects, it felt like just another violent landmark on the road of uncertainty – on which we’re all very weary travellers.

In a speech following the incident, President Biden said, “The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated…. American democracy is where arguments are made in good faith… where the rule of law is respected.”

“It’s time to cool it down,” he continued. “We all have a responsibility to do that.”

The incumbent is very correct.

In just about every part of the democratic world, political heat is reaching scorching levels. In the United States, over the last decade, the thermostat has been cranked to such an extent that as far as political rhetoric is concerned, it’s often accompanied by threats of, or sadly, even the manifestation of violence and unrest.

Similarly, when it comes to gun violence in the country, such as the example on Saturday, many of the decision-makers have appeared resigned to messages of “thoughts and prayers” rather than real action that will ultimately make a difference.

In this country, we’ve heard from First Nations leaders that, following the initial flurry of coverage following the discovery of children’s graves associated with residential schools and the subsequent discoveries each, unfortunately, garnering less attention and outrage than the last, there might be something of a news “fatigue” on this file.

Is that the case here? Is it fatigue? Is it resignation? Have we been so desensitized over the years that something that would have defined a generation a few decades ago is greeted with a sigh and/or and a brace for the next proverbial shoe to drop?

It’s hard to say, but wading through today’s political discourse, adapting as many “new normals” as a once-in-a-century pandemic required, and one “unprecedented” national and international event after another, can leave people, regardless of generation, mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Collectively, however, we can’t let it get the better of us. Real issues with long-standing consequences haven’t magically gone away or been consigned to the back burner. It’s incumbent on everyone, regardless of where they live, to stay informed, vigilant and focused on the issues that matter to them. If we don’t, we get the future we deserve.

I just shudder to think of future generations finding the mementos, however dispiriting and grim, we saved to remind us of “landmarks” in our own lives that are coming fast and furious at us.

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